understand you, Mr. Coadjutor; you would have me set Broussel at liberty.  I would strangle him with these hands first!” “And, as she finished the last syllable, she put them close to my face,” says De Retz, “adding, ’And those who . . . ’ The cardinal advanced and whispered in her ear.”  Advices of a more and more threatening character continued to arrive; and, at last, it was resolved to promise that Broussel should be set at liberty, provided that the people dispersed and ceased to demand it tumultuously.  The coadjutor was charged to proclaim this concession throughout Paris; he asked for a regular order, but was not listened to.  “The queen had retired to her little gray room.  Monsignor pushed me very gently with his two hands, saying, ‘Restore the peace of the realm.’  Marshal Meilleraye drew me along, and so I went out with my rochet and camail, bestowing benedictions right and left; but this occupation did not prevent me from making all the reflections suitable to the difficulty in which I found myself.  The impetuosity of Marshal Meilleraye did not give me opportunity to weigh my expressions; he advanced sword in hand, shouting with all his might, ’Hurrah for the king!  Liberation for Broussel!’ As he was seen by many more folks than heard him, he provoked with his sword far more people than he appeased with his voice.”  The tumult increased; there was a rush to arms on all sides; the coadjutor was felled to the ground by a blow from a stone.  He had just picked himself up, when a burgess put his musket to his head.  “Though I did not know him a bit,” says Retz, “I thought it would not be well to let him suppose so at such a moment; on the contrary, I said to him, ’Ah! wretch, if thy father saw thee!’ He thought I was the best friend of his father, on whom, however, I had never set eyes.”

[Illustration:  “Ah, Wretch, if thy Father saw thee!”——­354]

The coadjutor was recognized, and the crowd pressed round him, dragging him to the market-place.  He kept repeating everywhere that “the queen promised to restore Broussel.”  The fiippers laid down their arms, and thirty or forty thousand men accompanied him to the Palais-Royal.  “Madame,” said Marshal Meilleraye as he entered, “here is he to whom I owe my life, and your Majesty the safety of the Palais-Royal.”  The queen began to smile.  “The marshal flew into a passion, and said with an oath, ’Madame, no proper man can venture to flatter you in the state in which things are; and if you do not this very day set Broussel at liberty, to-morrow there will not be left one stone upon another in Paris.’  I wished to speak in support of what the marshal said, but the queen cut me short, saying, with an air of raillery, ’Go and rest yourself, sir; you have worked very hard.’”